Gov. Spencer Cox betrays his LDS values and good-ol-boy image by flip-flopping on Trump endorsement. 

Spencer Cox had us all “buffaloed,” as the genteel folks of Sanpete County may say. In the less genteel crowd I grew up with in the mining town of Bingham Canyon, Utah, the folks would instead say Spencer had us bullshitted.

Spencer is framed as a good ol’ farm boy from Central Utah, pulled fully grown from a Norman Rockwell painting. My great-great grandfather also settled in the Sanpete County area for a time, and it is where, I believe, he met and married his fifth wife. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit to know that not only do I have commonality in genteel cuss words with our governor, but also that I may share some DNA with his good neighbors.

And that’s where our commonality ends.

The sorry trap has always been that so many people blindly accepted that Spencer was a good guy because the alternatives in his party were worse. He’s let down Democrats, moderate Republicans and centrists time and again.

With last week’s endorsement of Donald Trump for president, Spencer Cox has fully entered the “fool me three times, shame on both of us” moment. It’s understandable that a Republican governor of a red state would endorse the Republican candidate for president. It’s not understandable, though, how Spencer Cox can even remotely believe that the flip-flop on his endorsement is defensible.

After all, Cox carefully casts himself as a soft-spoken man of religious conviction. That course must have led him to the understanding that Donald Trump has broken all 15 of the Lord’s Commandments to Moses. Yes, there are 15—but as we know from our studies of History of the World, Part 1, Mel Brooks, cast as Moses, dropped the tablet with the other five, leaving us with just 10. Doesn’t matter. Ten or 15, it’s still a perfect negative grade for Trump.

Cox didn’t just come out and say he’d changed his mind about Trump, he delivered a two-page letter that was entirely full of hand-wringing cow pies. It reads like the pimply faced “let’s make up” a youngster would write to his date to the Millard High Harvest Ball after she caught him stealing glances at other girls. As such, it’s laced with angst, guilt, apologies, conciliation and, of course, red-white-and blue religion.

Cox believes that it was a Biblically inspired miracle that Trump was spared from an assassin’s bullet, the event leaving him so shaken that he decided to go all in on a losing hand. Cox quoted the Apostle Matthew. He quoted Jesus. He cited better angels, invoked his belief in God and mirrored Trump’s message that “Evil cannot win” and that “only Trump can make that happen (victory over evil).” Really? Maybe that’s why he also quoted Melania.

Just a day later, Trump blew the Cox unity message to the top of South Tent Mountain by personally attacking his rivals, as he always has. Trump now has J.D. Vance as his barking dog (always the VP role in any race). Cox cited that two thieves died on either side of Jesus, Gestas and Dismas. Only Dismas found salvation. If Cox and Vance were nailed beside Jesus instead, it would be a toss-up as to which would be granted the miracle of salvation.

Meanwhile Cox is certain Trump’s brush with death was also a miracle. Yet, speaking of miracles, there remain 34 better angels who survived bullets spat from similar weapons by similar psychos at Parkland and Uvalde. No political gain, no miracles left to give and no personal letters it seems.

In 2016, Kamala Harris—acting as the California Attorney General—announced the arrest of Carl Ferrer, CEO of Backpage.com, on counts of felony charges of pimping a minor, pimping and conspiracy to commit pimping. I knew Carl. He’s a jackass who once threatened to put this newspaper company out of business because we would not join the Backpage classified network. One reason, as I told our publisher at the time Jim Rizzi, was that I didn’t want written on my headstone, “Here lies John. He sold sex ads.”

Ferrer turned state’s evidence, resulting in the prosecution of four Backpage stakeholders, three of whom still await prison sentencing while the fourth drove into the Arizona desert last fall and put a bullet through his head. Those guys were newspaper associates and friends of mine. Their case remains a pivotal First Amendment battle. Good, bad or indifferent, Harris has the political cred of standing up for victims of sexual predation, sexual assault and domestic violence. Cox has chosen the opposite side.

Cox thinks Trump is a savior. That very notion usurps his upbringing in the LDS faith, puts politics over people and now leads to the handing over of his party to his far-right MAGA nemesis Phil Lyman (the Utah GOP is rapidly becoming Lyman’s party now). Man, was everyone wrong!

Former Utah House Republican Stuart Reid recently told the Deseret News that Cox “has dishonored himself by endorsing and voting for an individual that, frankly, is the most disruptive politician in our history.” Reid left the GOP after the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Cox stayed and endorsed the antithesis of unity.

The Democratic candidate for governor is Brian King, a former LDS bishop with Utah roots as deep as they come. He similarly told the media that Utah, “deserves a governor who won’t leave you wondering if today’s the day he’ll have the political courage to do what’s right.” King will sleep well tonight. Cox will lie awake wondering how to square his moral duality with his grandkids.

But that’s his problem.

If unity really matters, if honesty matters, if integrity and faith matter, go with the guy who doesn’t support a convicted felon and rapist and who does not use Biblical passages to validate his own weakness.

That guy is Brian King.